About Joya Restaurant & Lounge

Joya Restaurant and Lounge provides a modern interpretation of the rich culinary lineage of Spain and Latin America. If you wish to experience a refined Latin-influenced dining experience, new age cocktails and festive live music in a comfortable, contemporary atmosphere, we invite you to join us at Joya Restaurant & Lounge.

Entertainment:During the spring and summer seasons, Joya often hosts live Latin musical performances on its open air patio. The lastest event information is announced on our website: www.joyarestaurant.com

Private Party Facilities:From initial design inception, Joya was envisioned to beautifully accomodate private parties. As such, Joya is a collection of unique, yet flowing separate spaces capable of hosting private parties from 8 to over 200 people in comfortable, modern style.

If you are vegetarian, you will be very disappointed. Dined here for the second time with another vegetarian, hoping that the menu options would have improved since the previous dining experience in 2017, but we were again disappointed.

The only vegetarian option was the "guacamole and new world chips". The "vegetarian paella" was rather meh, having an odd smoky flavor (not quite mesquite, but something close). The only other vegetarian options are oily, deep-fried appetizers: "chickpea & corn croquetas", veggie "latin empanadas". These were very very unhealthy and not especially tasty.

Also, the mixed drinks were unremarkable. I ordered the "Dessert Heat" which was described as a "hot" or "spicy" drink (jalapeno) but couldn't have been more tame. I sent it back due to lack of "heat" and received a slightly more spicy drink, but still disappointing and not worth my money.

Overall ambience, service and location is good, but the lack of vegetarian options and average drinks will keep me away.

Joya is truly a gem right in the heart of downtown Palo Alto. Although a bit pricey, the food is great, the service was spot-on and all the window seating is special. Ask for Gary. He is my favorite Waiter. Tell him Mo said so!!!!!

It was my wife's birthday and she loves Joya, and she (and me) was not disappointed. We had some of her favorite Tapas, very well prepared, and a delicious Sangria. Joya gave her a complimentary desert - churros with hot chocolate sauce with a birthday candle (photo). We came early, around 4:30, and the restaurant was not crowded - it's a good time to come and relax. Service was great.

Tags: Good for Anniversaries, Neighborhood Gem, Good for Groups, Great for Lunch, Good for Birthdays, Creative Cuisine, People Watching, Tapas, Casual

Great food and lovely decor. I booked through open table and mentioned that it was our anniversary in the special occasion box. We decided we wouldn’t get dessert but they brought us out a free dessert for our anniversary. It was a nice touch 😊

Tags: Special Occasion, Good for a Date, Handcrafted Cocktails, Romantic, Good for Anniversaries, Tapas, Good for Birthdays, Fun, Good for Groups

Wait staff was not in sync. We were not offered water until I had to get up and ask. Water was never refilled during the entire dinner. Waiter was less than attentive perhaps due to restaurant being short-staffed.

Visiting friends and our original restaurant choice was closed for a private party. Lucky us! Jumped on OT and was able to book Joya, no problem. It was an odd time time, maybe 3-4 so we were told Tapas Only, thank goodness because they were fantastic! We can't recall the waiter's name but he is the good looking , part Japanese fellow. Super service, friendly, knowledgeable, engaging. He suggested upping the count on everything to 4 so we could all share. We had the cheese plate, charcuterie platter, dates, croquettes, ahi tartar, short rib tacos. All tasty and plentiful. All 4 of us really liked this place, you should go!

Service was mediocre, one order (1 out of 5) failed to arrive. We waited for five minutes and then asked about our missing order, and was told it needed up at another table. Place was not busy, so I’m not sure what happened. Food was just so-so.

I'm going to be honest here, Joya is all about the ambience. The food quality isn't that great and the paella that they make you wait 1 hour for is extremely bland. Ceviche is mediocre. Overpriced items, you will have better food at Reposado which provides a similar ambience.

We ordered the vegetable paella @ $30., the presentation was at best sloppy and should have never left the kitchen. There were large chunks of various vegetables that could and should have been bite sized. Worst of all were the large wedge cut pieces of red onion laid on top that were unpeeled and still had the root end with roots still attached.

Food was great but wait staff preferred to chat among themselves rather than wait on tables. Our server was 10 feet away and never looked over or came to check on how we liked our food choices. IT was pretty irritating.

We met our friends who had traveled from NM for the weekend and had 2 toddlers with us on a Sunday afternoon. Relatively quiet and it was not crowded. We had several vegetarians in our party and the selection was quite decent. Food was yummy and the kids even had freshly squeezed juice as opposed to something from a can. Highly recommend!

Tags: Great for Lunch, Good Vegetarian Options, Great for Outdoor Dining, People Watching

After hearing good reviews about the food, we decided to go for our date night, which is very special since we have kids and always hard to get away. We arrived 10 mins early and was seated right away with the menu. We proceeded to sit for 10 mins without anyone greeting us or offering us water. Finally, a waiter passed our table and asked if we had been helped. He said he's not our waiter but was able to take our orders. Then for the next 60 mins, we got 3 tapas. The staff who clears the plates or refills our water did a great job. But no one ever inquired if everything came out well or if we needed anything else since that's a waiter's job. We didn't even try to order more food, fearing how much longer the wait will be. We had to flag the guy who took our order after waiting 10 mins in order to pay . And he was not the first staff we tried to get attention. We left the restaurant still hungry and truly disappointed that we spent our date night here. I would never recommend this place unless you are willing to wait a long time for food or go with a larger group so not easily ignored. And of course, the table of 5 next to us were getting plates after plates delivered while we were waiting for our food :(

Service was awful and food average, been here many times before and may only come back to sit at bar...sangria and yuca fries were the only stand out items of the night...server had another server bring out bday dessert without a candle but we weren't even ready for it, wanted to order more food, then when we were ready for it they brought out with no candle and I saw our server singing "happy bday" to another table...worst experience ever!!!!thank god the company was great and we enjoyed ourselves despite the awful service.

The restaurant called me the day before to confirm. I requested a change in the name of the person the table was booked for. They confirmed the name. But when the person went there, there was no booking. It was done for the CTO of my company and I ended up looking like a fool !

We enjoyed a wonderful mixture of tastes and textures at Joya--ceviche, croquetas, empanadas. All delicious. The lighting is lovely and the ambience restful and fun. Service was okay, seemed a little distracted but nice. Highly recommend.

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